The weekend of August 15 and 16 produced a torrent of newspaper and television reports of the Gary Evans saga. Horton and Jo Rehm refused to speak to anyone. They just wanted to let it all go, decide what to do with Evans’s body and try to move on.
Well-wishers and old “girlfriends” of Evans’s seemingly came from everywhere to talk about their brush with him. Lisa Morris—confused, upset, angry—spoke to the press, and she used the interviews as a way to sort through her feelings. She was shell-shocked by the totality of what had taken place. Like Jo Rehm, she may have been told by Evans what was going to occur, but it didn’t mean she believed it, or had prepared a way to deal with it after it happened.
By Saturday, August 15, Horton had received a letter in the mail from Evans. Quite matter-of-fact, the letter was devoid of any conscience or guilt. In large part, it was a detailed list of instructions for Horton to give to Doris Sheehan. Most compelling was what Evans, who referred to himself in the third person throughout much of the letter, wanted Horton to relay to Doris about his desire to commit suicide: It’s what he wanted, instead of suffering and dying every day. You know you wouldn’t want him to live in misery, you [Doris] know what [hell is] like.
For Evans, ending his life was the only way to quash the obvious suffering he felt in his soul. It was, like his life, all about him—egotism and selfishness to the umpteenth power. Evans was wielding his self-absorbed sword once more in death, as he had in life so many times before.
He wanted Doris to know, he wrote, that he was counting on her to have a great life.
As he had written to the world, Evans couldn’t resist the temptation to tell Horton the same thing: I win.
The letter, one could argue, was Evans’s final move in a game of psychological chess he and Horton had played for almost thirteen years.
Doris Sheehan had called Jo Rehm late in the day on Friday after Evans had committed suicide to “talk,” Jo later said. The conversation didn’t yield any breakthroughs in the sense of new information, but instead allowed the two women Evans loved the most to begin what would be a long process of mourning.
“Every time I hear a helicopter, sirens or a train,” Jo said later, “I think of that day.”
Evans told Jo just days before his death that he wanted to be cremated. “You don’t have to pay for any of it, either,” he added. “The state will pay for it.”
At the time, Jo thought it surreal to be talking about cremation, but she listened.
“I want you to give my ashes to Jim Horton,” Evans added. “You and [Doris] take some, too.”
On Saturday, August 15, Jo went down to a local funeral parlor and explained the situation. “I don’t want anything in the newspapers,” she said. “I don’t want to be hounded.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll take care of everything.”
Horton, Doris Sheehan, and Jo and Ed Rehm went down to the funeral parlor on Sunday to sit with Evans before his body was sent off to the crematorium. It wasn’t a formal wake or funeral service, but more of a way to say good-bye one last time.
Doris and Jo ended up having “words,” Jo recalled. Doris wanted to “take photographs of Evans lying in his casket,” but Jo refused to allow it. Then Doris started asking about Evans’s possessions: jewelry, a mountain bike, gold, rings.
She wanted it all.
“It was odd, actually,” Horton said. “She was worried about material things while Jo and I were there to say good-bye. Her boyfriend was waiting for her in the car outside the funeral home. He had no business being inside, and he knew that. I was a bit wary about being there to begin with. Her odd behavior only made it all that more strange for me.”
Back at home the following week, Horton sat down on his couch and poured himself a glass of scotch and began thinking about the past few weeks. How surreal it had all been. How much of a blur it seemed like now—almost as if it were some sort of dream.
Sitting, sipping from his scotch, going through some of the paperwork connected to the case, Horton came across Evans’s death certificate. For a moment, he just stared at it, not reading it. Seeing it again brought back memories of the autopsy.
“During the autopsy, I really felt a sense of relief,” Horton recalled. “It was truly over. Again, I had some ambivalence, but it was only because, with all the work I had done, I realized I would never get the opportunity to prosecute Gary—which was my main focus once I found out he was a serial murderer.”
After placing the death certificate down, Horton picked up a book of autopsy photographs and began flipping through the pages.
Not only were Evans’s eyes open during the autopsy, but—Horton noticed—he had a smirk on his face throughout the entire procedure, undoubtedly frozen in that position by the mere nature and process of death as the body goes through it.
“It almost looked like,” Horton said, “he was alive and was going to say something. Not unlike all the other times when he didn’t want to tell me something, but he couldn’t resist. I actually think he wanted to brag to me over the years about killing Michael Falco and Damien Cuomo, but couldn’t for obvious reasons.”
That smirk, Horton concluded, was, at least at the core of all the sensationalism attached to the life of Gary Evans, perhaps Evans, one last time, saying, “I win.”
As if the past thirteen years had been some sort of elaborate game of psychological chess, Horton raised his scotch in a mock salute to his twisted friend and opponent….
Checkmate!